Tony Bennett

Biography

Tony Bennett is Emeritus Professor in Social and Cultural Theory in the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. He was previously Professor of Sociology at the Open University, where he was also a Director of the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-cultural Change, and Dean and Professor of Cultural Studies at Griffith University where he also directed the ARC Australian Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy.

Professor Bennett is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and of the UK Academy of Social Sciences. He has published work on cultural studies, cultural sociology, literary and aesthetic theory, museum studies, and the history and theory of habit.

His books include Formalism and Marxism (1979), Bond and Beyond: The Political Career of a Popular Hero (1987, co-author), Outside Literature (1991), The Birth of the Museum (1995), Culture: A Reformer’s Science (1998), Pasts Beyond Memory: Evolution, Museums, Colonialism (2004), Accounting for Tastes: Australian Everyday Cultures (1999, co-author), Culture, Class, Distinction (2009, lead co-author), Making Culture, Changing Society (2013), Collecting, Ordering, Governing: Anthropology, Museums and Liberal Government (lead co-author), Fields, Capitals, Habitus: Australian Culture, Social Divisions and Inequalities (2021, convening editor), The Australian Art Field: Practices, Policies, Institutions (2020, convening editor), Assembling and Governing Habits (2021, convening editor), and Habit’s Pathways: Repetition, Power, Conduct.